


chasing relentlessly

by skatzaa



Category: Original Work
Genre: (If They Are Its Not Happening In This Fic), Brawls: A Necessary Component of Any Wedding, Clothed Sex, Emotionally Stunted Protagonists STILL Won't Admit They Have Feelings For Each Other, F/F, Friends With Benefits, Maybe - Freeform, Or a heavily implied Space Western setting at least, Reunions, Smut, Vaginal Fingering, enemies AND friends AND lovers, it's complicated - Freeform, space western, they're getting there though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:28:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26115700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skatzaa/pseuds/skatzaa
Summary: This whole vacation thing wasn't working out very well for Zyre. Good thing she'd just run into a familiar face ready to help relieve the boredom.Because if there was anything she'd learned by now it was that Songbird Willa, the deadliest outlaw in the quadrant, was anything but boring.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Space Bounty Hunter/Space Outlaw
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6
Collections: Femslash After Dark 2020





	chasing relentlessly

**Author's Note:**

> Cruria, I didn't quite work in the "getting to know each other" part of your prompt, but I hope this satisfied nonetheless.
> 
> Title from Zedd - Clarity, because it's stuck in my head and I also find it extremely funny.

“Hey there, sugar.”

Zyre ignored the woman sliding onto the bar stool next to her and ignored the greeting so sickly sweet it practically dripped Terran honey. The being on the other side of the newcomer got up and moved away _fast,_ especially for an Orun.

Instead of doing something similar, Zyre just pulled the brim of her hat a little lower and slumped closer to her shitty, watered down drink. She’d chosen Kle-3H because it was about as far out a spacer could get without leaving the galaxy entirely; she didn’t _want_ to be pulled into another mess until she’d slept for a week and had something better to drink than anything this shithole bar could offer. At _least._

The woman was not to be deterred, however.

“Aw, you aren’t still mad at me for Kenkadeh, are you?” she asked, milking that frontier drawl for all it was worth. “I _said_ I was sorry.”

Zyre gave in and tipped her chin up to glare at the one and only Songbird Willa, deadliest outlaw in the whole quadrant and biggest personal pain in Zyre’s ass.

Every bounty hunter learned sooner or later in their career that some bounties that just weren’t worth it—and if they didn’t learn, it was probably because they were dead. And as far as difficult bounties went, Songbird Willa was the undisputed queen.

Willa smiled, big and innocent and not fooling Zyre for a second. She looked just the same as she always did—hair wrestled into a haphazard braid and skin darker than Terran average from decades of terrorizing Gal-Sec units across the frontier—an incredible feat, considering the woman was meant to be dead.

“What do you want?” Zyre asked, regretting it as soon as she did. She _really_ didn’t want to know. This was supposed to be a vacation, damnit, maybe even a test run for retirement, to see if she could handle dying slowly of boredom instead of very quickly and probably painfully while chasing a bounty. She didn’t need Willa and her crazy schemes messing that up. _Again._

She _didn’t_ want to know. Really.

Willa raised her eyebrows, expression hovering somewhere between surprised and amused.

...But on the other hand, Zyre was about four days into this whole vacation thing, and so far it was more boring than a stint in a blackhole solitary cell. A little bit of excitement surely couldn’t hurt. And, while she would never admit this under pain of death, she’d been sad when news had come in about Songbird via the guild. She’d maybe missed her.

Just a bit.

Zyre shrugged and tipped her glass toward Willa in a salute that was just on this side of mocking.

May as well, right?

Willa told her.

Zyre stared for a long, long moment, Willa’s face not shifting out of its bland poker face, and then tipped her head back and drained her shitty drink in one long swallow. The bartender didn’t sidle over when Zyre motioned for a refill, which just about made up her mind. Kle-3H could rot in a blackhole. Next time she goes on vacation, she’s picking a resort planet instead.

“Alright,” she said, _definitely_ already regretting this. “Let’s do this.”

“I blame you for this!” Zyre had to shout to be heard over the din, but damnit if she didn’t have a point to prove.

 _Fuck,_ she shouldn’t’ve left her ion rifle on the ship. She’d known it about two steps off the ramp, but Willa’d said it was _rude_ to bring a rifle to a wedding, especially a wedding at which she was the guest of honor's date.

Rude her ass. If Zyre got out of this, she wasn’t letting go of her ion rifle for the next decade or so, and that was a promise. 

“How is it _my_ fault?” Willa asked, sounding extraordinarily wounded by the idea. She even had her hand on her chest in the little _bless your heart_ motion the frontier folk liked to use. Zyre wasn’t falling for the deflection. “It’s not my fault that the hosts seated a dhegil—”

She stood and spun around in one fluid motion, cracking an approaching taz’ut in the head with an ornately engraved iridium goblet that Zyre was pretty sure she got from the gift table, somehow. The taz’ut staggered back, coppery blood dripping from the crack in their exoskeleton, and chittered at them angrily. Zyre wasn’t exactly proficient in tak’ut, but she could recognize _Songbird_ in almost all the common languages by now. Word would spread fast, now that one being had figured it out.

Willa hefted the goblet again as a threat, and waited til the taz’ut backed away. She dropped down behind the table again, shoulder pressed against Zyre’s, and continued, as though she’d never been interrupted, “—A dhegil next to a qhen! Everyone knows they don’t get along, ‘specially not when a qhen’s been drinking.”

Zyre rubbed both hands over her face and asked the nebulas for patience. The ballroom behind them was still a cacophony of dishes smashing, tables breaking, bodies colliding with other bodies, and swearing in most every language known to the galaxy.

It was a good old wedding brawl, and Willa hadn’t even let her bring her _gauntlets._

This was payback for something, Zyre just knew it.

“You’re the one that insisted we—”

Ceramic crunched behind her. Zyre grabbed Willa and rolled just in time for the overturned table they’d been hunkered behind to go flying away. It crashed into the wall and exploded in a billow of splinters. Zyre let go of Willa and came up swinging the matching candlestick to that goblet Willa’d used. 

A tall, stocky qhen snarled at her—not the same qhen that started the brawl, this one’s scales were too dark—and flipped to a back grip on their wicked looking knife. 

Zyre planted her feet and waited for them to come to her. It didn’t take long.

She ducked under a swipe and launched forward under their arm. They were bigger than her and slower, and her shoulder had impacted against the soft spot on their torso before they’d had a chance to back up. They both went crashing down into one of the few tables still standing, and it splintered beneath the qhen’s back.

The impact knocked the air out of her lungs in a rush. Zyre rolled away, gasping, and wasted precious seconds trying to get her lungs to expand all the way. 

Something crunched and she flung herself to the side on blind instinct. But the blow never came.

Zyre pushed over onto her back in time to see Willa smash the goblet into the qhen’s shoulder, sending them headlong into another small pocket of brawlers. An ovvod punched them and they dove in to retaliate. 

Willa stepped closer, stretching a hand out. Zyre took it and used the leverage point to surge upward, right into Willa’s space. Willa tilted her chin back, eyes glinting, and Zyre said, _“You’re_ the one that insisted we be polite.”

“Is that so?” But Willa didn’t give her a chance to respond—she grabbed Zyre’s shoulders and pulled hard. Their mouths collided with such force that Zyre could feel her lip threatening to split, but she only dropped the candlestick and brought her hands up to hold Willa’s solid waist. The kiss was hard and messy, full of adrenaline, and it was like nearly every other kiss she and Willa had ever shared. When they broke apart, Willa was smiling. It was all teeth. “I feel we’ve overstayed our welcome here anyway.”

“Fine by me,” Zyre told her, but ducked down to steal another biting kiss.

Her bunk on _Ivory Star_ had seen its fair share of visitors over the long years, and Willa had been one of them—more often than Zyre cared to recall. 

Her bunk was currently a long corridor away, however, and there was a perfectly serviceable door right here. 

Zyre spun and pressed Willa back against it, crowding up against her and leaning into another sharp, sparking kiss. She’d known Willa a _long_ time—had chased her clear across the galaxy more than once: she knew how she fought, how she flirted, how she used your attraction to her messy hair and big brown eyes as a distraction while she stole your whole ship out from under you. And she knew her like _this—_ panting and wanting, braid coming undone against the outer hull door. She knew the way Willa liked to kiss, the way she liked to fuck.

She could admit, even, that she’d missed this. Missed Willa, pain in the ass though she was. 

The spacer outfits they wore weren’t easy to undo in a hurry, but Zyre knew this too. She flattened one hand against Willa’s back, pressing her closer, and used the other to undo snaps and buttons and ties. Willa clutched at her shoulders, the bite of her nails dulled by the padding of her jumpsuit. The kiss was hot and heady and shattered when Zyre finally worked her hand into Willa’s jumpsuit and rubbed a finger against her entrance.

Willa’s hands moved up, knocking the hat off Zyre’s head and knotting in her hair—and it was getting too long if she was able to do that so easily.

This was an awkward angle, and her wrist was starting to hurt already, but Zyre kept it up, pushing her fingers in deeper and using her thumb to rub Willa’s clit, listening to the moans and gasps and adjusting accordingly. She leaned down further to bite and then suck on the sensitive spot on Willa’s neck, keeping time with her thumb.

Zyre’d known Willa for a long time, and she knew what it meant when she couldn’t even moan anymore, when her fingers tightened in her hair to the point of almost-pain. She pulled away from Willa’s neck to look at her face, the unadulterated pleasure that left her mouth slack and her cheeks flushed dark. Zyre’d seen her like this before, countless times, but it still made something hot tighten and relax in her chest. 

She leaned in again, because she knew how much Willa liked to be kissed when she was this close, and pressed just a little bit harder. In her arms, Willa came undone.

It always took a long moment for Willa to come back to herself, so Zyre busied herself with extracting her hand and wiping it on the back of her jumpsuit, which really needed to be washed anyway. And she was ready when Willa opened her eyes and leered up at her, and cut in before she could so much as open her mouth.

“Save it for the bunk, yeah? My knees aren’t getting any younger.”

Willa rolled her eyes, but Zyre knew she’d go along with it. But—always one to get in the last word—Willa tightened her fingers in Zyre’s hair and pulled her in for a long, lingering kiss that made Zyre _very_ aware of how constricting her jumpsuit was, and just how worked up she’d gotten.

“Alright,” Willa told her after they broke apart. “After you.”

Now wasn’t the time to argue, so Zyre didn’t.

She had better things to do. Starting with the woman standing behind her. 


End file.
